


Gold

by mariabumby



Category: Free!
Genre: Canon Universe, Canon pining what are you talking about, Extended Canon, Gen, Happy Ending, M/M, Pining, Relationship Study, kiddie angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 04:11:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10153382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariabumby/pseuds/mariabumby
Summary: There is another sensation, without knowing someone, you’re doomed to love them. An odd phenomena where your string of idols and (crushes) parade in your mind and you realize, you have a type. And it’s embarrassing, confessional. Eureka moment mixed with being stripped naked. Because it’s all the things you lack and ever wanted, and they have it with such easy grace and you wish you can just bask in it: easily charming, friendly, genuinely and overtly romantic, cheeky smiles. And boy are you are so so gone.





	

**Author's Note:**

> #2016headcanoned so hard i need to post to ao3 about it

**Gradeschool, Sano Elementary.**

 

There is this sensation, without even barely knowing a person, you hate them. You try to pretend it on some moral high-ground - that they’re too popular, shallow, pretty that it’s abrasive. But honestly it’s your self-pity that’s talking, and boy it’s green with envy. 

 

There is another sensation, without knowing someone, you’re doomed to love them. An odd phenomena where your string of idols and (crushes) parade in your mind and you realize, you have _a type_. And it’s embarrassing, confessional. Eureka moment mixed with being stripped naked. Because it’s all the things you lack and ever wanted, and they have it with such easy grace and you wish you can just bask in it: easily charming, friendly, genuinely and overtly romantic, cheeky smiles. And boy are you are _so so gone_.

 

What’s crazy for Sousuke Yamazaki is that these two occurrences happened simultaneously in one person, and suddenly he understands it. What they mean - that soulmates are mirrors to your soul. And it pisses him off because this boy he both hates and gushes over is someone he comes to read so easily, understands so easily it’s telepathic. Easy, Rin is his not-me, his will-never-be. Sousuke is the turned-away, and hunched shoulders and disappointed scowl over a desk between contrasting feelings and Rin is the teasing eyes under windows of red hair, with dreams on his lips, candid, straightforwardly singing ‘please be on my team!’ like he was saying ‘free buckets of _ice cream!’_. 

 

‘swimming with you was so much fun.’

 

Sousuke, so bless this seven year old, is annoyed, split, and a little bit swept off his feet.

Meanwhile, Rin is already counting that sigh as a ‘yes’, right?

 

Sousuke nods slightly, he's young, he'll get over weird feelings.

 

 

 

**Middleschool, Sano Elementary.**

 

Do you remember the very first friend you made? How you made the most embarrassing promises, how you swore you would get houses that stood next to each other, and be neighbors for the rest of your life just so that we could still see and play with each other? You said ‘love you’ like it was nothing, and it’s the kind of memory that you both keep and silently agree to not talk about, when you're old enough to feel shame. Sousuke wonders if Rin remembers the lame pinky promises and bloodpacts that felt like me and you against the world, and the weird ass games they made up when they were six. He wonders if he misses them, or if it was as special as he'd recall.

 

Rin you used to be scared of the dark, you remember not being able to sleep over without holding my hand?

 

Sousuke for his fragile ten year old heart is dealing with a special kind of heartbreak. His first one. and really there’s no helping the bitterness that crawls into his heart when he sees Rin be characteristically himself, always in a loud group, the center of attention. One of them inevitably grew ahead of their little bubble, leaving the other. (Sousuke can never bring himself to dive into that crowd, as if there was an invisible film that's stopping him from entering that orbit. It was always Run approaching him). When they do talk, Rin keeps bouncing of stories of other people lives and the fun they had together and how Sousuke should come, and Sousuke should stop being such a wuss about it. Sousuke just scores and says 'popular kid’. It's like an inside joke, they both laugh and switch the conversation to swimming techniques.

Sousuke knows for a fact this isn’t intentional on Rin’s part and yet he has this ugly pride at his throat clawing to earn Rin’s friendship like a badge, monopolize it,  have all of this other boy he holds so dear. Sousuke hates this line of thought, this isn’t friendship, and he’s so self-aware that he’s terrible at this, but he really doesn’t know what to do with what he’s feeling and he doesn’t have anyone else to really talk about this.) How Sousuke is trying to accept a fact: Rin has become a very important person in his unpopulated life while he was just another face in the sea of Rin’s.

 

And sorry, Sousuke for the short notice, I can’t really sleep over this time, so it's Sousuke alone in his bedroom, staring up the ceiling, restless, disappointed with the lack of the familiar weight beside his body, and too wide awake and bothered and itchy wow, _i wonder what you call this_. . And the impending weight and confusion becomes too much 'til Sousuke snaps out of the honey delusion, like a raging puberty and his partner in crime, his world, his _crush-_ that he hung on a pedestal is now finally crashed to earth as a flawed and separate human being. You know. Who is. just so. _annoying_.   _different_ , and disagreeable that it makes his skin crawl, and he can’t even remember the details of what they last fought about, except that it left him seething, exhausted and hiding at the stock room with his jaw locked.

 

But he’s stuck with him, the way you’re born with a brother that’s been through too much and they comes around to talk again the next day, as sure as the sun rises and that water is wet. They settle things with races, and janken, and you are so tiring really matsuoka, but okay -one last time! Their other friends say they fight like cats and dogs but keep looking for each other anyway. Cause, where the heck _were you_  Yamazaki? 

 

"Were you lost again ?! Aha! LAME Y’know you’re such a trying ass-music-loner-cool-kid, if you didn't swim i don't think i'll let you be my firend.’

 

‘oh yeah matsuoka? at least i’m not a pretty-boy-popular wanna-be i mean seriously Rin, you just DYED your hair” and they’re elbowing each other pretty seriously now, half wrestling half walking .

 

”Rin you’re such a princess and you- STOP. DON’t. OK .Me and Gou still Accept you, COme on”. 

And Sousuke realizes for all the socially awkward dork that he is,  that maybe he's okay with that. Maybe we’re all different, and sometimes all you really need is a really few good friends, and Sousuke is so grateful for the ones he has and he swears he’ll never say that out loud to Rin, or Gou, or Kisumi. That he’ll swallow this ugly pride and look past their differences, that no matter what we're gonna be okay and we're real, and even when I see you with other people I know you still come crying to me, it's just how it is.  Like what the heck is this feeling Kisumi, tell me. 

 

“best rivals” ?

“best friends” ?

 

hmmm, Sousuke tries both labels on his tongue. Wonders if rivalry is what you really feel if you wanted to destroy the competition to make Rin look at me like that again. Like the rest of the world finally fell away, piercing eyes were tunneling only, and only me, and a shit-eating grin that wants _one more. one last time. i’ll race yah._ the bike ride home, for popsicle sticks, for 100m butterfly. laughing - again, again, again. best of five, come on don’t go home yet, _Sousuke._ in the pleading whiny voice that runs like a favourite record. The fighting definitely counts as rival behaviour, Rin is too sappy about wanting teamwork of all things in swim relays. and it’s like a tired lecture:

 

' If you wanted teamwork Rin, you should’ve run of to basketball - not swimming. It doesn’t matter what your dad had, swimming is more of an individual sport. you care too much about how other people are doing, you should really be working on your self.’

 

‘ ooh talkative Sousuke, you don’t even know how people  work’

 

Sousuke glares back, eyebrow saying _(oh but i know you, and i know that you want to win, and you need to listen to me)._ Rin is pouting eyes narrowing, voice lowered, spits: 'you’re being unreasonably harsh again Yamazaki’

 

'you just don’t like hearing the truth.’ 

 

Rin thinks _(yeah i know that, that’s your job as best friend, Yamazaki, and sometimes I’m bitter about that)_

‘OKAY, prove it, I’ll race yah.”

 

and they tie and do it best of 3, best of 5, okay best 7

 

“ONE LAST TIME.”

“mmmm”

“RIN”

a pause.

“YOU”RE ON SOUSUKE"

 

And they race, to prove who was right for that day, always settling their fair amount of differences, aware of each other’s personal boundaries, ‘one last time!”

 

 

what they say when they're drained of energy, when walls chip away.

 

(( yes, this relay race your dad also went to as a kid is important to you, cause you’re a sentimental sap and I’ll join already okay. okay, Rin stop begging it’s embarrassing.))

((that yes, i know Sousuke, I’m not gonna force you to be the best of friends with our teammates. and just don’t scare them away like that. dude your face. god,you look scary when you’re just scared too. fix it, Sousuke, it’s a waste of a handsome face)) 

 

-

 

And if anything it’s proof to how much they both love the spirit of the sport, and take competitive waters so seriously when they bet so much of their prides and hopes on being capital Atheltes that the one fated day was bound to happen. That day that was supposed to be good memories, Rin’s childhood fantasy come true and not this boiling frustration, because we’re so awkward at this relay thing, and god why do we suck, I hate losing so much when it’s not my fault, who was that backstroke swimmer anyway? who’s stupid idea is this anyway? the nerve! and Sousuke needs to skin someone alive and chew out incompetent worthless teammates who even dared to screw up Rin's dream because we _don't lose_. We don't lose at swimming. And Sousuke’s young immature pride finally snaps at the sight of Rin comforting the underserving backstroke bastard that Sousuke's anger zeroes in on Rin.

 

Sousuke obviously crossed a line.

He seriously wonders if he could call himself a good friend, after saying things that made Rin cry like that.

 

-

“losing because of weak teammates suck” 

“teammates suck. i’m quitting the relay team. Rin just no way. ever. again.”

“i only swim for myself” and Sousuke puts his foot down and stands ground, imagining himself as some steely eyed lone wolf, self-made hero that answers and is burdened by nobody, with words so cutting and razor sharp- knowing so well it would make Rin cry so hard like that. Rin is choking back tears right now, biting his jaw so tight, not backing down, letting out a sound cause he’s Sousuke's rival too and he’s not losing, he’s not gonna take any of his dreams back. Because Sousuke knows Rin so well, knowing in the bottom of his black heart that Rin only ever wanted to win a relay meet his bestfriend, a certain Sousuke Yamazaki and make genuinely good memories and he wonders to himself what stupid shit went into his head this time to even spit such insensitive bullshit - to the person he wants to hurt the l- god. And Sousuke’s running away, god he never regretted something so badly in his short life. 

 

Sousuke yamazaki at the tender age of ten, experienced thorough heartbreak for the second time in his very recent life.

 

-

 

For all the terrible things he’s  done, Sousuke assures himself on the following things the day Rin left Sano Elementary:

 

one.  

Sousuke yamazaki has been officially a horrible friend, and for the life of him WILL learn to be a better one, if it is the last thing his dork-ass does.

two.   

He will find a way to forgive himself for the things he said, since Rin already did. And Rin swears he’s thought about moving away for a while, and I’m not mad at you, seriously stop it sousuke. (I do not deserve to be friends with this kid.)

three.

That they’ll stay friends regardless of time and distance. Since Rin already declared it,  'we’re writing letters from now on!’ Rin is raising his fist. (And Sousuke thinks he does not deserve to be bestfriends with this kid, notinamillionyears) he raises his own fist to meet Rin’s. Their skin touches lightly: something inside of him is simultaneously mending and breaking.

four.

They will be seeing each other again in swim meets, and they’ll compete like old times, Rin demands this. So you better not slack off Sousuke. (Rin and his grin and his quirky teeth, and his eyebrows and his red hair,  Rin and his hand holding his luggage, Rin entering a bus, Rin —- that’s not coming back,Rin going so impossibly far away_)

 

lastly.

Most importantly, this one, by all means necessary, Yamazaki Sousuke. You will never ever ever make Rin Matsuoka cry like that again, ever again. please.

 

He imprints the image of that bus wheeling away with the best thing that happened in his life.

He prays that Rin Matsuoka would happen to him again, just one last time.

 

-

 

Maybe one great friend is enough to last a life time, but Sousuke is begging:

let me be with him. just one last time.

 

-

 

**Middleschool, Sano Elementary.**

**/Middleschool, Iwatobi Elementary**

 

They write letters as promised.

They go through a shitstorm that is life in their own individual paths but keep quiet about it. 

They put on for each other a brave face,

For Rin it was the shark tank of Australian competitive swimming and the overwhelming talent of Nanase Haruka.

For Sousuke it was recurring shoulder injury, completely undeserved and fatal for his career in competitive swimming, and what’s left of his pieced together pathetic athletic pride. what karma is this. can he keep swimming?

 

And he’s worked so hard to keep his promise for five arduous years.

He wishes Rin would write back. He prays Rin is ok.

He begs for a version of the story where him and Rin would just recollide. “Because if I’m giving up on what I’ve worked on for my whole life, at least let me live out a stupid wish, and it’s not even mine: You know, the one where my best friend said he really wanted to swim relay with me.” 

Sousuke bows harder at temple shrines,  hat if all his years of training culminates to just fulfilling this one stupid task, if upto this point in life his only purpose for existence was to swim back full cricle and do this one small thing, correct one regret, accomplish penance, for this one inconsequential person that dragged him from the beginning anyway to, for the most stupidest fricking dream 

to swim for. _his_ .team.

 

goddamit Rin it’d be worth it.

every single second.

 

. this last time Sousuke decides, he's going to settle the score for good. 

 

-

 

**highschool, Samezuka Academy**

 

It’s really difficult, to explain the miracle that is Rin Matsuoka’s acclaimed Golden Year. The year that the miracle was that we walked on earth and that he swam in water and he breathed through air. Einstein’s patent office days, 360 degree turnaround, critical performance -climax 365 days a year. People say they didn’t recognize him, people ask him what parts of the soul did he trade to the devil to wind up that way. And to be honest, Rin Matsuoka cannot explain his Golden year either.

 

Rin gives some credit to Seijuuro for forgiving him for his stupid sophomore mistakes and entrusting Samezuka to him. Rin says Samezuka has always been strong.

Rin says Iwatobi gave him some peace with himself and that’s why he was able to obsessively mother the club, piece together a dream relay team, ace his grades, and find his guts and repieced-together pride to apply to Australia.

Think about olympics again.

 

But that's not all of it, exactly. So Rin works at the question further.

 

Rin catalogs his year and recalls all the time he’s doubted himself, traced back to the _shitstorm of five years_ , and tries to relive and re-piece together where the hell it all went. He sorts through the possibilities 'til Sousuke's face comes again and again, like a persistent  wind, that clears the sky and allows him to finally breathe. Familiar, quiet, understanding. A subtle kind of care that doesn’t draw attention to itself. A rival who's words I trust, who just brings out the best with me with just two steely eyes and that rare grin-

Rin scares himself with how fast he shoots up from bed.

As if his mind had been living off blurred photographs and with the thought of Sousuke all of his mermory, and all of his life clicks into dazzling clarity and Rin understands why this year was something gilded.

 

_ oh, i love sousuke. _

 

and importantly,

 

_ he's always loved me.  _

**Author's Note:**

> so gay i have no regrets, comment my loves //edited it a bit


End file.
